Journal of International Marketing Strategy Vol. 4, No. 1, December 2016, pp. 6-23 ISSN 2474-6096, All Rights Reserved Pursuing the Concept of Luxury A cross-country comparison and segmentation of luxury buyers’ perception of luxury Jean-Noël Kapferer, INSEEC Business School
[email protected] Anne Michaut, HEC Paris
[email protected] ABSTRACT In modern economies, luxury represents one of the most global sectors; the same brands are leaders in most of the countries where they operate, and they deliver mostly the same luxury experience. Yet no global consensus among academics allows for a definition of luxury, including what makes a product a luxury product or what makes a brand a luxury brand. The present article, therefore, reports on a novel analysis of how luxury buyers define luxury, according to its most salient attributes. The data come from 3217 luxury buyers, recruited from six countries, both Western and Asian, developed and emerging, and mature luxury markets or not. The results reveal a common core of three central attributes that is used to define luxury worldwide, though strong differences arise across countries on the more peripheral attributes of luxury. A typology of luxury buyers, in turn, suggests five definitions of luxury, each with distinct weights in the examined countries. Notably, four of them do not reflect the three core determinants of luxury revealed by the country analysis. Thus, each country’s luxury profile mixes two dominant types, and these findings offer some unique theoretical and managerial implications for the luxury sector. Keywords: Luxury, Fashion, Prestige, Segmentation, Categorization, Globalization, Localization. INTRODUCTION The luxury domain is a paradox.